That Old Black Magic
by Gabriel Seraph
Summary: The Governor comes to Papen County to confirm whether the rumors about another man with the ability to raise the dead are true - and together, they inadvertently trigger a zombie apocalypse that starts to slowly wipe out the eastern US from the inside out. Possible limes, bloody hilarity, odd humor, highly AU for TWD.
1. Chapter 1

AN: I don't think I should have to say this, but this story will be odd and incomprehensible at best. Especially to TWD fans, whose show I will be horrifically mangling to fit into the Pushing Daisies Fuller-verse.

Supposedly, Pushing Daisies' never-produced third-season comics would have incorporated a zombie-apocalypse-y storyline. With this knowledge, I have been inspired to create yet another bizarro mashup.

Logic? I don't need no stinking logic! Sanity-free storytelling, that's the order of the day from me!

R&R and enjoy!

Chapter 1

At this very moment, in the heart of Papen County, one Phillip Phillips - who, despite his name, had virtually nothing to do with the _American Idol_ winner of the same name - was holding a slip of paper up to the sunlight. Squinting against the impossibly bright colors of the fanciful facades around him, Phillip Phillips pocketed the paper and searched for the one building he sought above all the others in this surreal, fantasy-land city.

The facts were these - Phillip Phillips, known to his best friends as "the Governor," had traveled for nine days and nine nights from his home in the wilds of Georgia in search of a legendary figure whom, he believed, shared the same unusual power he had - after a fashion. For all the forty-one years, eight months, seventeen days, five hours, and twenty-eight minutes he had lived, the Governor had boasted a most unusual ability. Much like the Pie-maker we have come to know and love, the Governor could touch the dead, only once, and they would immediately return to life. But if he touched them again, they would die, this time forever. And if he kept them alive for longer than a minute, then something in the vicinity, of roughly equivalent "life value," would die in their place. After all, Death likes to keep his books balanced.

Although the Governor feared he might find himself lost in the maze of lurid buildings so oddly designed they couldn't possibly have been built for real, he had no trouble spotting his destination in the end. There is something about a building in the shape of a pie that makes it quite difficult to miss.

Entering the Pie Hole, the Governor approached the counter and waited for someone to talk to him. Soon enough, Olive Snook emerged, bearing a rhubarb pie for Emerson Cod, who at the moment was nowhere to be seen because he was running precisely five minutes and ten seconds late for his usual lunchtime at the Pie Hole. Olive spotted the Governor and placed the pie on the counter before saying, "Welcome to the Pie Hole. How may I help you?"

"I would like to meet your Pie-maker," said the Governor. "That British voice in the clouds told me he could be found here."

Olive put on an ingratiating smile. "Yes, of course," she said, wondering exactly what kind of insanity she was about to step into. "Ned?" She called into the kitchen. "There's a gentleman in a dirty suit here to see you."

"I'll be right out!" answered the Pie-maker.

"He'll be out shortly," said Olive. "In the meantime, could I interest you in a nice warm slice of pie? I have to recommend the strawberry. I've always been partial to that one."

The Governor smiled politely. "Thanks, but no thanks," he said. "Never have been too fond of strawberries. But I see you have a grape pie on the menu," he added, pointing to the sandwich board above the kitchen window. "So hard to find that flavor. May I have a slice?"

"Absolutely," said Olive, bustling into the kitchen and returning, two minutes later, with a sizzling hot slice of grape pie. "A la mode?" she asked.

"No thanks," said the Governor. He paid for his slice and took a seat, noticing that the round windows had a weird bluish tinge to them, especially at the edges. He took the first bite of his grape pie, allowing the sweet succulence to touch his tongue - only to be followed by a sharp but momentary flash of pain, as the grape fragment in his mouth suddenly grew tiny fangs and bit him on his tooth. He quickly chewed up the grape and swallowed it before it could bite him anywhere else in his mouth.

"Hello, sir," said the Pie-maker, sitting across from the Governor. "How may I help you?"

"Excuse me," said the Governor, wiping his mouth. "First I should introduce myself. Name's Phillip Phillips, but they call me the Governor. And you are?"

"Ned." They shook hands.

"Well, Ned," said the Governor, "I have a little problem with a dead person on my property. I think he might have gotten himself shocked to death by my electric fence, but I just wanna be sure my son didn't shoot him dead or nothing. Gotta watch that boy, he's not exactly right in the head."

The Pie-maker nodded. "Mysterious death? You've come to the right place. Just let me call my partner, I'm sure he'd be very interested in this."

"Very good," said the Governor. "My place is on the other side of the cemetery, so I'll be waiting by the main entrance. As soon as I finish this marvelous pie, that is. Very well done."

"Thanks a lot," said the Pie-maker. "When do you expect you'll be at the cemetery?"

The Governor checked his watch. "Thirty minutes."

"Meet you there," said the Pie-maker, as he returned to the kitchen, leaving the Governor to continue eating the grape pie even as it attempted to eat him.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Phillip Phillips, the so-called "Governor," led the Pie-maker inside the graveyard, selecting a tombstone at random and starting to dig up the dirt at that spot. How horrible, to defile a grave like that. Even worse, this grave happened to belong to Lily Charles. Formerly one half of the Darling Mermaid Darlings, Lily Charles died of shock upon learning that her niece Charlotte "Chuck" Charles, who was really her daughter, was alive after all, thanks to the Pie-maker, bless his foolish heart.

"Hold the phone," said the Pie-maker. "I thought you said you were going to show me some dead guy who touched your electric fence."

"Well," said the Governor, "I lied. I apologize for that, but it was entirely necessary. I really had to show you this nice little surprise. You didn't think you were the only one in the world capable of raising the dead, did you? That your ability came by a sheer one-in-a-billion accident of fate?"

The Pie-maker frowned deeply. "As a matter of fact, yes, I did."

"The truth, then," said the Governor. "I came all the way up from Woodbury, Georgia, 'cause see, I raise the dead too. But there are differences between us. Differences in how our powers work." He gestured to the coffin of Lily Charles. "And I hope to use this body as a demonstration dummy."

"Aunt Lily was no dummy," the Pie-maker said. "Touched in the head, yes, but she was a surprisingly sharp woman."

The Governor laughed, a harsh bark completely at odds with his projection of charming, gentle Southern gentleman's charm. "So you know this woman. Well, that should make it easy for you to raise her. Don't worry, I'll do the honors. No need for you to have to rudely awaken a woman you already know."

The Pie-maker rubbed his wrists. He would have to make sure the Governor kept well away from Chuck.

"Here we go," said the Governor, opening Lily's coffin. Surprisingly, the old woman was very well-preserved after over a year in the grave. He reached down and touched the tip of her nose. With a small electric spark, Lily came back to life, a faint echo of her last scream whispering out of her mouth.

"All right, why am I not in heaven anymore?" Lily growled. "Who the hell are- wait a minute. Ned? Shut the front door, it is you!" She looked around. "Wait, why am I in a coffin?" She spotted the Governor. "Gotta warn you, honey, I'm extremely rusty in all the wrong places."

The Governor grimaced. "Yes, I can see why you didn't want to revive her. You said you were in heaven before? Jesus. His standards must really have gone down."

"Why you little shit! I'll show you low standards!" Lily lunged at the Governor, but he scrambled back out of the hole he'd dug and well out of her reach. The Pie-maker reached down to try and touch her and kill her off again, this time for real, but the Governor stopped him.

"I'll take care of this, friend," he said, reaching down himself and touching Lily's outstretched hand. Instantly, Lily froze, but didn't fall back into the coffin in the same position as she'd been in since her burial. Instead, her skin yellowed, shadows appeared under her eyes, her teeth rotted a bit, and she started lunging anew at the Governor and the Pie-maker.

Clearly, Lily had become an undead zombie.

"What did you do?!" yelled the Pie-maker.

"That's what I wanted to show you!" the Governor replied. "Now I need you to make her dead again!"

"What?" The Pie-maker was beyond confused. "I don't even know if that's possible!"

The Governor slid backwards on the dirt. "Just try! Now!"

The Pie-maker grabbed Lily's wrist, only for her to muster up a sudden burst of brute strength and throw him aside like a sock puppet. His head collided with another gravestone, and he fell into an open grave, where mere seconds before he died he made contact with the corpse of a freshly buried black-haired teenage girl.

"What the...where am I?" the girl asked in a slight Spanish accent. The Governor ran over to the open grave and hefted the Pie-maker out, in the process bringing his fellow dead-raiser back to life and accidentally brushing the Spanish girl's thumb even as he attempted to steer clear of her upraised arms flailing around as she asked for help.

The Spanish girl froze and turned into an undead zombie herself.

"Still think I'm the guy to help?" the Pie-maker asked.

"Um...no," said the Governor. He looked at zombie!Lily as she shambled through the rows of gravestones, and then at the Spanish zombie-girl as she struggled to clamber out of her grave. "Run?"

"Damn straight," said the Pie-maker, and with the Governor lagging only inches behind he ran for the gate as if a pair of female undead zombies were on his ass.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The Governor and the Pie-maker tore out of the cemetery and collided with none other than Emerson Cod, who had been sent down there upon hearing from Olive about the mysterious Southern visitor. Emerson glanced behind the two men, then saw their sweaty red faces. "I do hope you haven't gotten up to any shenanigans in my absence, buddy," he said to Ned.

"I don't know if that's the right word to describe this," said the Pie-maker, "but I'll take it. You're not gonna believe this..." He gestured behind himself at the two undead zombie women, still shambling at a snail's pace in their general direction.

"Oh, hell no," grumbled Emerson. "Don't tell me you had something to do with this."

The Governor took this moment to speak up. "Actually, I'm sorry to say it was all my fault. Phillip Phillips, but most people just call me 'the Governor.'" He shook hands with Emerson, or at least tried to, because Emerson flinched away before they could make contact.

"Great," he groused. "Just what I need, another dead-raising guy. Wait, you said you did this? Don't tell me you can make zombies!"

"Zombies? Is that what they're called?" asked the Governor, who was rightly confused because he'd never heard the word before. After all, the use of the word "zombie," in this universe, was largely limited to unusual works of fiction well outside the realm of normal pop culture, like the adult pop-up books Emerson favored.

Emerson shook his head in serious exasperation. "Honestly, Ned, I don't even know why I bother trying to make sense of this crap anymore. I mean, there's another guy who can raise the dead? Just how many of you are out there?" The Governor was about to provide an answer, but Emerson cut him off. "On second thought, don't tell me. I really don't wanna know." He turned his gaze upon the two female undead zombies, who were now less than ten feet from the gate. "And I'm assuming none of you know how to kill these mofos?"

"Why?" asked the Pie-maker. "Do you know? How to kill them, I mean."

"Hell yeah, I do!" said Emerson, drawing a pistol from underneath his standard purple jacket and taking aim. It took him three tries to get both of their heads shot straight through, and with those booming headshots, the two undead zombies were rendered dead, this time forever. For a split second, Emerson realized that he'd just done exactly what he'd seen Ned do countless times before - although his method of permanent dispatch, while equally effective, was considerably bloodier and gorier. "Now," he said sternly, turning back on the Pie-maker and the Governor as he stowed his gun safely inside his jacket pocket, "tell me those are the only zombies you've raised today."

"Erm...yes?" said the Governor, fully aware that it sounded more like a question than a statement of fact.

"Wait," said the Pie-maker. "He said, 'today.' Does that mean - oh God, don't tell me..."

The Governor nodded somberly. "'Fraid so, fellas. In fact, that's kinda why I came to you today..." He crossed over to his nearby truck and put the radio on, tuning it to the right station to pick up on a constant siren tone. It was the Emergency Alert System, and like all such alerts, it came accompanied with an automatic, computerized voice explaining the situation as calmly as possible. For "calmly," read "far more calmly than any human was capable of, especially during a time of actual emergency."

"_This is not a test_," the voice said. "_This message is being broadcast at the request of the State of Georgia. A contagious disease has broken out in the Atlanta area, causing severe fevers and chills and coughing. The mortality rate has been determined to be 99%, but it appears that whenever a person dies from this disease, they soon come back to life."_ There was a pause. "_Yes, you heard that correctly, the victims are coming back to life and experiencing extreme rage, including the urge to bite and maul anybody, especially people who are not yet ill._" At this point, the Governor finally turned the distressing robo-message off.

"How did you do that?" the Pie-maker asked, shocked.

"I really don't know," said the Governor. "But since your touch kills people instantly after they're, um, reanimated, I would think maybe you could put a stop to all this?"

"Ned?" a female voice called out from across the road, where Emerson's car was still parked. Charlotte "Chuck" Chambers clambered out and crossed the street. "What's going on?"

The Governor perked up. "Oh, hello, miss. Name's Phillip Phillips, but they call me-"

"No, Governor, don't!" the Pie-maker yelled as the Governor reached out to shake Chuck's hand, but it was too late. Their hands met, and Chuck shuddered for a second before her skin turned gray, her eyes went transparent and bloodshot, and she started snapping and growling at the men.

"Oh, hell no!" cried Emerson once more.

"What have you done!" yelled the Pie-maker as he grabbed Chuck's hand, instantly knocking her out as his touch killed her for good. She collapsed like a discarded puppet, and the Pie-maker sank to his knees alongside her. "My God, what have _I _done?" he whispered as he realized the love of his life was dead and gone forever.


End file.
